Bergo Bettina - Nietzsche and Levinas : after the death of a certain God

NIETZSCHE AND LEVINAS

Insurrections: Critical Studies in Religion, Politics, and Culture

INSURRECTIONS: CRITICAL STUDIES IN RELIGION, POLITICS, AND CULTURE

Slavoj iek, Clayton Crockett, Creston Davis, Jeffrey W. Robbins, Editors

The intersection of religion, politics, and culture is one of the most discussed areas in theory today. It also has the deepest and most wide-ranging impact on the world. Insurrections: Critical Studies in Religion, Politics, and Culture will bring the tools of philosophy and critical theory to the political implications of the religious turn. The series will address a range of religious traditions and political viewpoints in the United States, Europe, and other parts of the world. Without advocating any specific religious or theological stance, the series aims nonetheless to be faithful to the radical emancipatory potential of religion.

After the Death of God John D. Caputo and Gianni Vattimo, edited by Jeffrey W. Robbins

The Politics of Postsecular Religion: Mourning Secular Futures Ananda Abeysekara

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E-ISBN 978-0-231-51853-6

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Nietzsche and Lvinas : after the death of a certain God / edited by

Jill Stauffer and Bettina Bergo.

p. cm. (Insurrections)

Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.

ISBN 978-0-231-14404-9 (cloth : alk. paper)

ISBN 978-0-231-14405-6 (pbk. : alk. paper)

ISBN 978-0-231-51853-6 (e-book)

1. Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 18441900. 2. Lvinas, Emmanuel.

I. Stauffer, Jill, 1966 II. Bergo, Bettina. III. Title. IV. Series.

B3317.N4845 2009

193dc22

2008020252

A Columbia University Press E-book.

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Here I am for the othersan enormous response, whose inordinateness is attenuated with hypocrisy as soon as it enters my ears forewarned of beings essence.... The hypocrisy is from the first denounced. But the norms to which the denunciation refers have been understood in the enormity of meaning... to be true like unrefrained witness. In any case nothing less was needed for the little humanity that adorns the world....

After the death of a certain god inhabiting the world behind the scenes, the substitution of the hostage discovers the trace, the unpronounceable inscription, of what... does not enter into any present.

Levinas, Otherwise Than Being

By applying the knife vivisectionally to the chest of the very virtues of their time, [the philosophers] betrayed what was their own secret: to know of a new greatness of man, of a new untrodden way to his enhancement. Every time they exposed how much hypocrisy, comfortableness.... how many lies lay hidden under the best honored type of their contemporary morality.... Every time they said: We must get there, that way, where you today are least at home.

Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

HEARTFELT THANKS to David Bertet (Universit de Montral) who prepared the bibliography and helped translate two essays, to Gabriel Malenfant (University of Iceland) and William Colish (Universit de Montral, CRUM) for their scrupulous editing; finally, to Tyson Gofton (University of Toronto) and Philippe Farah (Universit de Montral) for their bibliographical research. Special thanks to Babette Babich and Debra B. Bergoffen for permission to reprint a version of Claire Elise Katzs essay, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Thus Listened the Rabbis: Philosophy, Education, and the Cycle of Enlightenment, which first appeared in New Nietzsche Studies, Special Issue on Nietzsche and the Jews, coedited by David B. Allison, Babette Babich, and Debra B. Bergoffen, vol. 7, no. 3/4 (Fall 2007). Thanks also to Hlose Bailly (Universit de Strasbourg II, Marc Bloch and Universit de Montral) and Oona Eisenstadt (Pomona College) for their comments on several essays, and to Andranne Sabourin-Laflamme (Universit de Montral) for her research into vitalism and mechanism. Without the criticism and insight of Grard Bensussan (Universit de Strasbourg II, Marc Bloch) and Franois-David Sebbah (Universit de Compigne), this collection would not have been possible. Special thanks are owed to Brian Schroeder, who helped formulate the project that led to this collection and helped in so many ways during the process of working on it. Thanks also go to the Hurford Humanities Center at Haverford College, and to all the philosophers at John Jay College, CUNY. The generous financial support of the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada helped to make the material realization of this project possible, as did the CUNY Research Foundation.

Nietzsche

(English translation precedes the German edition cited)